New Yorkers Against Bratton as police commissioner

Members of New Yorkers Against Bratton continued to call for the removal of Bill Bratton as the new police commissioner at a rally on the steps of the Brooklyn City Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 3.

The group, using the slogan “Vision Zero, Zero Tolerance for Police Brutality,” passionately called on newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to replace Bratton because of the police chief's record. According to the vocal demonstrators, Bratton is accused of reigning in an era of mass incarceration, racial profiling and murder of Blacks and Latinos in New York City.

Carl Dix, an activist from the Revolutionary Communist Party, said it is up to the people to put an end to stop-and-frisk and not to wait for the mayor.

“Revolution means accepting nothing less than an end to racial profiling of Black and Latino youth and an end to a system that inflicts it all on the people,” said Dix.

Dix accuses the government of the criminalization of a whole generation of young people and treating treating them like they were guilty. He pointed out that a person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

“Too many youths do not survive long enough to prove their innocence,” he said.

Members of the group, holding up placards, also called for the continued criminalization of youth in the minority population to stop. They stressed that is not about about hiring another police commissioner, but that those policies that hurt Black and Latino youths should be abolished.